Using the Tarot for Creativity and Empowerment

Tarot 101: Generating Tarot Card Meanings

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Now that you’ve got your Tarot journal, it’s time to go through your deck and generate keywords for all of your cards. This is a good way for you to get familiar with your deck and to start learning the meanings of the cards. So in your Tarot journal, designate at least one page for each card and perhaps add a section entitled: “Meanings” or “Keywords” – anything that is relevant to you.

To start generating keywords, you can use a Tarot book or better yet (for extra points!), use the cards themselves. Turn each card over and write down what YOU think it means. The beauty of the Tarot is that there are no wrong answers! Each card has a multitude of meanings, depending on the question, the position in the spread as well as the intuition of the card reader. When reading for others, you may often rely on your intuition to determine the message of the cards so this is excellent practice for using your intuition. To start out, write down just one keyword for each card. It’s easier to memorize one meaning that 40.

The whole idea here is just to get you more familiar with your cards and to begin thinking about meanings for the various cards. Many readers read completely intuitively; that is to say, they do not rely on memorized meanings but rather on the card images, on what the pictures are telling them. No matter what kind of reader you turn out to be, you will come to appreciate and perhaps rely on your Tarot journal down the road.

There is one book that I recommend to my students that has an excellent list of keywords for each card, including keywords, phrases, situation/advice and reversed meanings – Tarot Plain and Simple by Anthony Louis. It also includes tips on reading Tarot as well as incorporating numerology, astrology and more into your readings.

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